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Official casting call reveals the characters in Star Wars: Episode VII

A Lucasfilm verified casting call for Star Wars: Episode VII has finally leaked. And now we have a vague grasp of just what kind of characters Disney wants to cast in the next Star Wars movie. And it’s a very “fit” future. Bleeding Cool uncovered the first official casting call for Star Wars: Episode VII,…

Would you magically reset your country to only its native species?

Let’s say you get a device, or perhaps a biological agent, or maybe even a weirdly specific wizard-wand. It has one function. If you use it, all the non-native species in your country would be gone. Would you use it? And if you’re on the fence, what conditions would sway you either way? The first…

Space Food Sucks: NASA’s Quest to Serve Astronauts Four Star Meals

If you’ve ever eaten the dehydrated “space food” sold in novelty shops, you probably thought, “Oh hey, not bad!” Now imagine eating the same thing for years on end. Yup, it would get boring. The New Yorker has a lovely story on Nasa’s quest to battle the “menu fatigue” that astronauts develop after they’ve been…

Apple May Destroy Classic Game Consoles With Just a Gamepad

Apple single-handedly created the world’s biggest handheld game market through low-cost, digitally-distributed games, turning traditional handheld game devices into niche products for dedicated gamers. Now they may be about to do the same with home consoles by adding a gamepad to their Apple TV.

This Tiny Wooden Speaker Turns Your Glasses Into Equalizers

Chances are you’ve used an equalizer before, and chances are there was a lot of blindly turning dials and hoping something good happened. The Timbre Speaker embraces exactly that kind of blind experimentation by using nothing but two glasses for its sound control. Designed by industrial design student Casey Lin, the speaker appears to be…

Hemlock Grove gets a second season on Netflix

Eli Roth’s gory werewolf series will live on for another season on Netflix. Based on the novel by Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove’s first season really got the blood pumping… and gushing, mainly all over its characters. The 13-episode gore and sex heave series has been given a 10-episode second season, which will be released in…

Ray Bradbury left his personal book collection, and some other personal effects, to the Waukegan Public Library, which is planning a permanent Ray Bradbury exhibit. Road trip?

Fascinating Map Shows the Original Meanings of Place Names in America

The Atlas of True Names—compiled by cartographers Stephan Hormes and Silke Peust—catalogs the etymological origins of place names across the world. This image shows the original meanings of the names of states, cities and landmarks across North America. Well worth at least thirty minutes of scrutiny.

The Most Important Scenes from Man of Steel (As I Remember Them)

While Man of Steel has been a box office success, its interpretation of Superman has divided some critics and fans. In hopes of bridging this gap, I have decided write down Man of Steel’s most important scenes for further discussion. (Warning: My memory may be a tiny bit off, but I’m pretty sure this is…

Why Eight-Hour Workdays Are Pointless

Whether you like it or not, your eight-hour workday shouldn’t last eight hours. The fact is that different people need different work hours, but everyone can use a few simple tips to increase productivity and happiness, from turning off notifications to dividing your day into 90-minute windows. https://lifehacker.com/why-we-should-rethink-the-eight-hour-workday-515742249

This bizarre optical illusion dance is way more fun than it should be

It’s the folk-rock polka music that really makes it. What’s most impressive about this illusion is how it manages to trick your brain, even after you’ve worked out the whole split-body, black-and-white outfit situation that makes it work. Try as you might, and conscious of the gimmick though you may be, it’s more or less…

A Hologram-Projecting R2-D2 Birthday Cake Makes Us Insanely Jealous

We’ve seen a lot of awesome cake designs over the years, but this is the first time we’ve been genuinely envious over what a six-year-old was served at his birthday party. After all, who wouldn’t want an R2-D2 birthday cake that actually projects holograms like the one Marc Freilich made for his son Alexander? Besides…

Watch Stephen Colbert’s Tear-Jerking Tribute to His Dead Mother

Opening yesternight’s Colbert Report after a week-long hiatus, Stephen Colbert paid a very emotional tribute to her mom, talking about all she meant for him and his siblings. She died last week at the age of 92. You can watch it here. http://gawker.com/watch-stephen-colberts-heartwarming-tearful-tribute-t-514533962

20 Photos of Iconic Buildings and Bridges As They Were Being Built

There’s a great scene in the first season of Mad Men where Don unveils a campaign for Bethlehem Steel. “New York, Chicago, and Detroit—all brought to you by Bethlehem,” reads the copy. The client rejects the pitch, but the sentiment itself was hard to argue with: steel from those small rustbelt towns was feeding the…

Why is NASA studying these concentric stone rings?

These patterns are stromatolites. They can be flat layers, they can be puffy mushroomoids, they can be made of white limestone or they can be made from iron. And they can be clues about life on other planets. Stromatolites are the oldest fossils in existence. They’d have to be, since they’re remnants of the oldest…

WSJ: Facebook Will Announce Ambiguous Vine-Like Video Sharing Today

The WSJ is the latest publication to report unnamed sources claiming that today’s Facebook announcement will be all about video sharing. Now it looks like the service will be separate from Instagram? Or is that an omission? According to “sources with knowledge” Facebook will announce “pieces” of a “Vine-like video service”. The main difference between…

Ask a New York City Movie Location Scout Anything You Want

Did you know there’s an abandoned swimming pool in the basement of the Woolworth Building? Did you know there’s an abandoned Cold War-era missile silo buried under a log cabin in the Adirondacks? Do you have any idea what happened with the filming location of Ghostbusters or Annie Hall? Nope! But Nick Carr, the location…

What do you do when your work becomes obsolete?

The Last Ice Merchant is the story of Baltazar Ushca – a 67-year-old, 5-foot-tall man who has been harvesting glacial ice from Ecuador’s Mount Chimborazo for over 50 years with little more than his hands, some hay, and a small pack of donkeys. Ushca lives a life of toil, and for very little pay. That…

Why Microsoft Xbox One’s New Policies Are Actually Bad for Consumers

Caving to the pressure from rabid gamers in the internet, Microsoft decided to let anyone to share and sell physical disc games freely in their next-gen Xbox One. Ironically, that’s terrible news, as Kyle Wagner cleverly explains in Gizmodo. https://kotaku.com/microsoft-is-removing-xbox-one-drm-514390310

This pathetic GIF could be the first message aliens receive from us

As if to further reinforce the stupidity of the recently launched Lone Signal project, this mind-boggingly absurd GIF was just sent on a 17.6 light-year journey to Gliese 526 in hopes that it’ll get picked up by an extraterrestrial civilization. Yes, really — this is how we’re going to say “hello.” https://gizmodo.com/new-project-to-message-aliens-is-both-useless-and-poten-512863567 This GIF, along…